It is factual that military jobs rank highly among the occupations that have proved to be stressful. Research studies conducted on the functionality of the human body processes including but not limited to the physiological and psychological processes indicate that stress is one of the top most causation of biological changes and usually aims at activating the body’s fuel reserves. As such, military personnel are no exception save for the fact that the nature of their work and the environment upon which it is done revolves around a large and frequent number of uncertainties and changes, thus acting as a perfect breeding ground for stress factors. Much work and research have been done over the years in trying to provide ways of dealing with the stress factors without much fruition. This paper purposes to delve into this subject matter.
Dealing with the Stress Factors
According to Ursin (2012), concerns about family welfare stands out as one of the significant stress causing factors in the military workplace. There are various reasons given out ranging from deployment to distant places from the family and laissez-faire attitude of top military leadership towards the welfare of military personnel, especially those occupying the lower cadres. In his argument, the scholar opines that this kind of situation can be reversed if proper and sustainable policies are put in place to check the welfare of military personnel, especially during deployment. Additionally, the problem can be downscaled if adequate and accessible communication is established between the military personnel and their families, more so during deployment circumstances.
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Mitchell & Everly (1995) however shed more light on the matter by arguing that insufficient knowledge regarding foreign language plays a huge role in causing stress among military personnel. This is especially when situations or cases involve foreign participants or targets. In order to solve this, the military chain of command should ensure that the personnel are well versed in a foreign language used in the target country or the foreign language used by an enemy. This is achievable through in-house language training and recruiting bilingual or multilingual individuals.
In the mindset of Walker et al. (2008), lack of equipment causes more stress than other common causes such as those already mentioned. In this case, lack of equipment is used in references to the inadequacy and usage of old dated equipment that accord enemy targets an unfair advantage. Other factors that have been shown to cause stress among the military include combat experiences, the injuries faced while in the line of duty as well as the length of time the soldiers are deployed. In fact, it is worth pointing out that the morale of soldiers tends to decrease with increased multiple deployments. This can be overcome by adopting positive coping styles such as problem and emotion-focused coping (Harms et al.,2013).
References
Harms, P. D., Krasikova, D. V., Vanhove, A. J., Herian, M. N., & Lester, P. B. (2013). Stress and emotional well-being in military organizations. In The Role of Emotion and Emotion Regulation in Job Stress and Well Being (pp. 103-132). Emerald Group Publishing Limited.
Mitchell, J. T., & Everly Jr, G. S. (1995). Critical incident stress debriefing (CISD) and the prevention of work-related traumatic stress among high-risk occupational groups. In Psychotraumatology (pp. 267-280). Springer US.
Ursin, H. (Ed.). (2012). Psychobiology of stress: A study of coping men . Elsevier.
Walker, R. W., Horn, B., Canadian Defence Academy., & Gibson Library Connections, Inc. (2008). The military leadership handbook . Kingston, Ont: Canadian Defence Academy Press
